Key points are not available for this paper at this time.
Abstract The alkoxyl radical is an essential and prevalent reactive intermediate for chemical and biological studies. Here we report the first donor–acceptor complex‐enabled alkoxyl radical generation under metal‐free reaction conditions induced by visible light. Hantzsch ester forms the key donor–acceptor complex with N ‐alkoxyl derivatives, which is elucidated by a series of spectrometry and mechanistic experiments. Selective C(sp 3 )‐C(sp 3 ) bond cleavage and allylation/alkenylation is demonstrated for the first time using this photocatalyst‐free approach with linear primary, secondary, and tertiary alkoxyl radicals.
Zhang et al. (2017) studied this question.